Cherisse Moe

In this world, there are two types of peo­ple-talk­ers and do­ers.Jenelle De Leon falls square­ly in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry."The words 'no' and 'can't' are def­i­nite­ly not in my vo­cab­u­lary," she in­sists.Known in the world of en­ter­tain­ment as J An­gel, the 23-year-old is one of the lead­ing per­son­al­i­ties on the hippest ra­dio sta­tion in the na­tion, SLAM 100.5FM...Pro­gres­sive Ur­ban.Her sooth­ing voice can be heard every Mon­day-Wednes­day from 9 pm-mid­night and on Fri­days from 9 am-noon, slam­ming along­side DJ Young Kingston.She's back at it again with DJ Mar­lon on Thurs­days from 9 pm-12 pm and on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day from 6 pm-9 pm.And just in case, you're won­der­ing, yes she's a worka­holic!"But there's no bet­ter thing than to be at your sec­ond home do­ing some­thing you re­al­ly love," she de­clares, laugh­ing.

Fu­tur­is­tic

De­scrib­ing SLAM as a "fu­tur­is­tic sta­tion," J An­gel said the ur­ban fre­quen­cy is as­sert­ing it­self as a leader in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive ra­dio mar­ket.And when it comes to her seg­ments, her steadi­ly grow­ing fan base is ev­i­dence that she's al­so do­ing some­thing right.

"They love that I'm re­al and that they can con­nect with me. I al­ways try to put on a show," she told the T&T Guardian.DJ Young Kingston, re­al name David Shep­pard, con­curs.The New York City-born, St James res­i­dent, is com­mit­ted to bring­ing his en­er­gy through the air­waves and he's mov­ing with an ac­cel­er­at­ed pace to leave his mu­si­cal mark in the lo­cal in­dus­try. Al­so the sta­tion's pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant, DJ Young Kingston is march­ing to the beat of his own mu­sic and lov­ing every minute of it."It's been a nice ex­pe­ri­ence. It's new and there's so much to learn," he said.

Slam lab

Al­so fly­ing the SLAM flag high, DJ Mar­lon, a Na­tion­al Four Mills Util­i­ty At­ten­dant said he brings to the SLAM team, ex­pe­ri­ence and ver­sa­til­i­ty.De­scrib­ing him­self as "dif­fer­ent," the for­mer St James Sec­ondary stu­dent said with fea­tures such as Slam Your Lyrics and The Slam­ming Ques­tion of the Night-fans are af­ford­ed "that in­ter­ac­tive feel."

A DJ for the past decade, the 32-year-old, who picked up the art of mix­ing mu­sic as a teenag­er from his un­cle, stat­ed that fans are al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a new di­men­sion in sound."A lot of peo­ple lov­ing it...It's time for a change, time for some­thing dif­fer­ent. We're bring­ing that change."J An­gel in­ter­ject­ed, "We are like Span­ish, we have a mix­ture of every­thing. It's like a chem­istry in the slam lab."En­joy­ing the fruits of her labour, J An­gel's rise to fame is in­deed an in­ter­est­ing one.

"At the age of 13, I would walk to the phone booth every af­ter­noon af­ter school just to lis­ten to the TSTT op­er­a­tor. Re­mem­ber, the days when you had to use the com­pan­ion call­ing cards at the phone booth and when you put in the num­ber, the op­er­a­tor would tell you what to do? I loved how she sound­ed and I told my aunt I want to be just like her!"Af­ter two months and "plen­ty buff" from her aunt, J An­gel per­fect­ed the record­ing. She would al­so im­prove her dic­tion by read­ing news­pa­per sto­ries aloud to any­body will­ing to lis­ten.To­day, her ded­i­ca­tion con­tin­ues to pay off. Her hum­ble be­gin­nings, how­ev­er, serves to keep her ground­ed.

"Peo­ple look at me now and as­sume that I had it all. They don't know that as a child I used to help my par­ents sell veg­eta­bles and fruit in the Port-of-Spain mar­ket. They don't know that I grew up in the gar­den dig­ging yam and man­go to sell. Look­ing back now, I think that's the rea­son why I could con­nect so eas­i­ly with peo­ple on air. I nev­er for­get where I come from."